


Unlikely Does Not Mean Impossible

by fresne



Category: English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Francis James Child
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, F/F, F/M, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, People get Murdered, Unrequited Love, Yuletide 2015, Yuletide Treat, murder ballads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 05:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5485991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isobel wished Lillie Fleur had the magic to make something impossible happen. She wished she knew what Lillie Fleur saw in Jellon Grame.</p><p>But then, Isobel was looking for something else when she looked for love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unlikely Does Not Mean Impossible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cygnes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/gifts).



> Thanks to L. Baker for the SPAG Beta. Any errors that remain are my own.

Isobel was a Lady who lived in a great white house in the gentle woods of the lowlands. They seemed plenty high to her, but growing up, she'd often heard her nurse speak of the highlands to the north. Her nurse spoke of Vikings as if she'd met them. She spoke of handsome knights and fairy queens. Isobel fell asleep listening to her nurse's stories.  
  
When Isobel turned nine, her mother sent away her nurse and put Isobel in a corset. She hung wide willow panniers stuffed with horsehair off her hips. Isobel was nine. She didn't have hips. She had a place where hips were going to be. She did have willow panniers stuffed with horsehair that it made impossible to sit on most chairs. She asked her mother, "Can we put something inside them at least?"  
  
Her mother said, "No. That's not what they are for. Now show me your embroidery hoop."  
  
Isobel held up her hoop. Her mother sighed. It was odd, because Isobel could sew. She could sew a hawk's eyes shut just fine when they were calming it during training. She could dress a deer.  
  
Jellon Grame, the Gamekeeper, showed her once. Once was all she'd needed.  
  
Isobel needed a good deal more than once to learn to embroider a flower on a piece of linen. Never was closer to the word.  
  
Her mother brought Isobel a lady's companion from France, a woman who could teach Isobel harpsichord. Isobel worried for days after mother told her. She imagined a grand woman with wide silk skirts and a sneer on her lips.  
  
Lillie Fleur was only a few years older than Isobel. She wore simple wool. There was a sweetness to her lips. She'd seen her parents die in the Terror and there was an echo of sorrow in her eyes.  
  
It was a kindness, Mother hiring a poor French lady to teach Isobel harpsichord.  
  
It wasn't a kindness that Isobel, two steps over the edge of being a woman as well as a Lady, longed for things not to be.  
  
However, the entire family agreed it was a kindness that when there were guests visiting their home in the woods away from the city, Lillie Fleur, and not Isobel, would play.  
  
Lillie Fleur was Isobel's Lady's companion. Isobel wasn't very good at being a Lady.  
  
As Isobel looked down at the mud caking her boots from where she'd slipped away to hunt before breakfast, she said, "You have your work cut out for you."  
  
Lillie Fleur nodded with wide solemn eyes and shivered at the cold, although it didn't seem particularly cold to Isobel. "It is a pleasure." With a wink at Isobel, Lillie put out a saucer of milk and set the boots next to it. She put Isobel into her corset and left it loose enough so Isobel's chest could expand out as well as up. She found a way to put useful things into Isobel's panniers. That was almost as magical as the fact that by the time they returned from breakfast, the boots were clean, and none of the maids had done it.  
  
Isobel told Lillie Fleur, "I thought only old farm wives set out saucers of milk. Here you are from France, and you know our magic creatures better than I do."  
  
Lillie Fleur shook her head. The yellow curls pinned there didn't move. "I am from Brittany, which is a different thing entirely than being from France. Although I understand the English don't see it that way." She winked at Isobel when Isobel protested. Lillie Fleur understood Isobel was Scottish, not English at all. She said, "Merlin is trapped in a tree somewhere in the Broceliande forest that spreads over the heart of Brittany. Nimue's daughters live there still."  
  
Isobel nodded, and wished Lillie Fleur had the magic to make something impossible happen.  
  
But not even Lillie Fleur's clever soft hands and kind sweet smile could pull an embroidered flower out of Isobel's fingers, although that was not what Isobel was longing for at all.  
  
Lillie Fleur didn't embroider flowers, either. She embroidered beautiful designs that kept the rain from a coat. She put herbs over the window, and flies never dared come into Isobel's room.  
  
Isobel thought it was funny, given how much time she spent in the muck with the horses, where no amount of magic or herbs could rid the place of flies. She and Lillie Fleur laughed about it as Lillie Fleur set a saucer of milk by the hearth.  
  
They laughed when Jellon Grame came courting Lillie Fleur with bunches of heather. They whispered together when he brought Lillie Fleur a dead grouse.  
  
Isobel stopped laughing when she saw Lillie Fleur blush at Jellon Grame's rough words of endearment.  
  
Isobel didn't say she could have brought Lillie Fleur a grouse. When next she brought in game, she wanted to take it to Lillie, but she gave it to Mrs. Machadden, the cook, as per their secret pact.  
  
She didn't say anything when Lillie Fleur asked Isobel to say they were walking before breakfast. Lillie Fleur crept away to Jellon Grame's cottage, and Isobel went to hunt free in the woods. Isobel thought about Lillie Fleur as she walked silently along deer trails. She thought about Jellon Grame's rough whiskers and wished Lillie Fleur had the magic to make something impossible true.  
  
One night, Lillie Fleur came to Isobel weeping. She said, "I've hid it these many months, but I'm with child. My Jellon has put a babe in me, and now he won't see me."  
  
Isobel held her. She sat on the stairs up to her bed and rocked Lillie Fleur. She sang silly songs her nurse had once sung. Isobel tucked Lillie Fleur into her own bed, where she had so often wanted to ask her to lie down, under the cover of warmth or friendship or laughter.  
  
Isobel went down to Jellon Grame's cottage. She knocked on the door. He answered with his rough red whiskers and big barrel chest. Isobel didn't know what Lillie Fleur saw in him, but then Isobel wanted something far different. She said, "Lillie Fleur is carrying your baby. You'll do right by my Lilly Flower, or I'll see you whipped from my father's estate."  
  
He sneered at her. "Will you, little girl?"  
  
She pulled her knife from her boot. She'd never used it for anything other than gutting an animal, but that's what Jellon Grame was. She said, "I will, and don't you doubt it."  
  
She supposed she only had herself to blame when Lillie Fleur ran off with Jellon Grame. She had only herself to blame as cried herself to sleep. She had only herself to blame when Mother got her a proper maid from Edinburgh without any of those wild French ideas and ways.  
  
Mary cinched Isobel into her dress as tight as an apple skin. Until her chest could only rise up and not out. There were no more pockets in her panniers. There were still mud-caked boots, but they stayed mud-caked and came with a scolding from Mother. Although Isobel noticed Mother always enjoyed the venison when Isobel could manage to carry a deer home on her shoulder.  
  
Isobel missed Lillie Fleur. She'd go into the woods and sit under the branches of an oak tree, where lilies grew even out of season. She'd brush fingers over petals and forget to hunt entirely. She'd tell herself to stop feeling. She told herself Lillie Fleur had no more sat under this tree than any other in the woods. Lillie Fleur was a wife and a mother now, and lilies were just silly flowers.  
  
The branches of the old oak, heavy with mistletoe, would moan and she would feel sad all over again.  
  
She felt this sorrow even after a year. Even after two years she still ached. But it was a slow sad ache like a leaf falling from a tree or a flower turning brown.  
  
Mother said, "It's time to start looking for a husband for my girl."  
  
Father said, "Let's see if we can find one here in the country first." Father did not want to go to Edinburgh with its sooty stacks and close-in buildings.  
  
Her parents welcomed guests and suitors from neighbouring estates and far away.  
  
One day, a fair Lord attended a house party at the estate. No one knew Lord Silver. He was from the highlands in the north.  
  
Mother said, "Who invited Lord Silver?"  
  
Father said, "I think it was Lord Elgin."  
  
They looked at each other and said at the same time, "Remember last year."  
  
Isobel did not care. She had decided to put aside her caring. She had decided to put aside her tears. She had decided Lord Silver had a pretty soft mouth and wore his cheeks as clean as a girl. He wore a fine hat with a pretty feather and had long curling hair. He wore a fine velvet coat and spoke with a soft voice. He talked about Knights and Ladies. He talked about monsters and fairies. He told her he had a touch of fairy blood in his veins. He was so pretty she believed him.  
  
She thought to herself, "I could love him." When he tempted her away into the woods, he gathered acorns for her under the old oak where she'd so long mourned. He plucked off the cup and offered it to her as all the cup he could give her. They sat under the tree. They sat and they kissed. She thought to herself, "I do love him." The moan of the oak tree in the wind could have been her moans as he unlaced her dress and corset, and air rushed into her. She felt light-headed with freedom.  
  
He said to her, "Run away with me, and I'll take you to my home in the north." He kissed her and she loved him.  
  
She said, "Yes." She even said yes when he told her to bring what gold was in her father's desk. She even said yes when he said to bring her mother's jewels. She even said yes when he said to bring two horses from the stable.  
  
Isobel slipped away while her maid Mary was snoring. She rode on the white horse a Lady should ride next to her knight on the dappled grey. She told herself, "This is what I want. This is what I can have."  
  
They rode all the way to the sea. Isobel looked at the waves and the stream that led to them. She said. "Your home is in the sea?"  
  
He pulled her roughly on the horse. She was so surprised, she let him. He said, "I've drowned six pretty girls here, and you'll be the seventh. Now take off that fine dress. I don't want it wet when I sell it."  
  
"So you don't have a touch of fairy blood in your veins?" asked Isobel, who wanted to be sure.  
  
"Only a fool would believe that." His pretty eyes were cold. She wondered how she hadn't noticed, but she supposed she'd been trying not to.  
  
"If you're going to kill me, turn away while I undress, and cut the brambles away from the edge of the stream. My hair will catch on them. I want to drown quickly, not be caught on the edge."  
  
Silver, who was probably not a Lord, nodded. He took off his fine hat with its feather and his velvet coat with its buttons, and went to the water's edge. She jumped on his back and held his head down in the water. He struggled, but she was on his back and he was as slender as a tender girl, who hadn't hauled a deer home to the cook when she could get away with it.  
  
Isobel said, "Six pretty girls have you drowned here, but," she bent down to shout in his ears, "the seventh will drown you!"  
  
He must have heard her. He struggled even more. But it did him no good. When he was dead, she rolled him into the waves and threw his hat after. She rode toward home all through the day. She supposed she was well ruined, which was good.  
  
But she ached for what would never be.  
  
She stopped short of her home, under the oak tree where Silver had kissed her. She stopped where bunches of lilies grew out of season. She walked her milk-white horse to the tree.  
  
There was a young woman there. She was perhaps twenty-one. She wore the leathers of a hunter. There was a dead man at her feet with an arrow in his heart. Isobel knew him. It was Jellon Grame. She looked at the girl, who had Lillie Fleur's wide eyes. She had Jellon Grame's red hair. The girl said, "He killed my mother. She's buried under this tree. I don't want him anywhere near her."  
  
Isobel closed her eyes and put her hand on the earth. Above her the oak tree moaned. Isobel said, "I knew your mother. I loved her." She looked at the dapple grey. "I also have two horses, and if you don't mind a long ride, I know a good place to leave a dead man."  
  
The girl said, "Then let us be away."  
  
They rode north and since Isobel saw no great reason to go back to be caged in a corset, they didn't ride back.  
  
Now it's said they rode to the edge of the island that is Britain and kept riding across the waves, but that would be as unlikely as a girl who could grow into a woman in two years. Unlikely as a Lady falling in love with the child of her true love and her true love's killer. As unlikely as an oak in the woods that never stopped raining acorns, and lilies that grew out of season. As unlikely as two ghosts who fled up and down the coast, chased by the shades of six angry young women.  
  
Unlikely does not mean impossible.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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